Will California ease professional licensing rules for Illegal immigrants?

May 12, 2014

A bill that would allow illegal immigrants to forgo some professional licensing requirements passed the state Senate on Thursday.

Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) introduced SB 1159 to ease the licensing process for psychologists, pharmacists, real estate agents, security guards and dozens of other professional occupations. The legislation would allow about 40 state boards to accept a federal taxpayer identification number as proof of identification for those who do not have a Social Security number.

Proponents of the bill say it will be in line with other measures passed such as lower tuition, financial aid for immigrants and immigrant driver’s licenses. These measures were passed to provide economic mobility and self-sufficiency to the 1.85 million people in the state illegally.

Opponents of the measure say it aids and abets illegal immigration. In addition, a spokesman for the Republican caucus voiced concerns about the financial cost because the IRS would have difficulty identifying and tracking those provided professional licenses even though they do not have a Social Security number.

In that other country, if you are illegally displacing the legals, you can by a contractor’s license to get out of jail. The price will very depending on your state’s side accounts and how long you want to live in their kennel (jail).

This is want happens when people vote democrat and continue to vote democrat. Especially now with more free stuff in society more and more illegal immigrants are going to vote even more for free stuff. Noticed a democrat Latino assemblyman authored a bill in Sacramento to make Obamacare legal for illegal immigrants when Obama said 3 years ago that Obamacare was not going to pay for illegal immigrants, you guest it.

As a contractor, this will devastate me. With the economy being the way it is, I’m barely able to get enough work to get by. Having to compete with illegal aliens, who will be able to get contractors licenses, will probably put me out of business. Contractors are self-employed, so this also means I won’t even be able to apply for or receive unemployment insurance. By passing this bill, our representatives are putting law breaking illegal aliens ahead of hard working, law abiding, honest citizens. The U.S. permits more legal immigration than all other countries combined. A fact we should be proud of. Illegal immigration is another matter entirely & should not be permitted. I guess I’ll be forced to move to another state to make my living & start over.

Bingo…
As a self employed contractor myself, I get tired of hearing how “they only want the jobs we won’t do”…
BS, ILLEGAL aliens are flooding here breaking our laws because “they can get away with it” and they are getting taxpayer assistance including out reach by the sate and county governments in the form of work and financial aid. They are targeting the construction industry because the pay is good and because of people like rep. Lara. This is one of the hardest states to do business as a small business. Too many regulations, fees and competition by ILLEGAL aliens. Illegal is illegal and should not be rewarded…

“Illegal is illegal and should not be rewarded…’
I agree with you easymoney…

SLO County:

For the past 30 years “cheap” Mexican laborers first targeted the yard clean-up jobs and the fast food industries / restaurants where they are janitors and cooks, including almost all the “fish-in-chips” eateries, especially in Morro Bay.
They also target the maids and house-keepers jobs and NOW in the past 5 plus years they are taking over the high paid Construction / building trades.
You’ll hear that “whites” won’t do those jobs anymore or just don’t want to work, and that the younger whites are all pot / meth / heads, which isn’t true. Whites have been slowly squeezed out or many jobs.

There may be some jobs that few “gringos” would be willing to do — mainly manual farm labor. However, most of the jobs that “gringos won’t do” are undesirable because of the compensation for the labor involved not because there aren’t people willing and able to do them.

Employers will pay the least they can for any job that requires minimal training to do reasonably well. Part of this is to keep their profit margins up but a bigger factor is that they are competing for work with others who will undercut them if they charge enough for their goods or services so that they can pay decent wages and benefits. To stop this race to the bottom (line), we need to penalize those who don’t treat their employees fairly enough to discourage that activity.

For services, that means making sure that all employers pay rates that are above the rate needed to stay out of poverty and have employees who are legal and properly trained for the work. If we need more workers just to fill the demands for employees, we can let more people in who are willing to make the effort and commitment to become citizens. (Or return to a green card system for temporary workers.) If we only need more workers because employers want to keep labor costs down, tough. They need to pay more — and to charge more for their services if that is what it takes.

For goods, it means penalizing people who produce those goods in countries with nothing approaching reasonable safety and environmental requirements. “Fair trade” is only fair when the game is played on a level playing field. I think that American workers can compete successfully under those circumstances since the costs of shipping goods to the US would negate much of the wage savings abroad and the rest would be negated by improved efficiency and quality.

In both cases, consumer costs will rise but that will be offset by higher wages and business expansion as employees who have disposable income will buy more goods and services from others.

I looked up the bill. Here are my results. The bill allows anyone to qualify to be certified by one of our 40 boards if they apply with a ssn or a TIN (ITIN) number (issued by the IRS when tax forms are filed by someone without a social security number.) A partnership can use a Federal Taypayer Identification number instead of the individuals’ ssns.

The IRS does require some proof of identity (such as a birth certificate, visa, foreign voter card,etc.) to issue a TIN number to file a tax return. So, does the IRS check the authenticity of the documents. They are not set up to do this, and they are very clear that the TINs are for filing taxes–nothing else.

Then, the next problem is that if there is a complaint or problems with a building contractor, for example, the person licensed through a TIN number could simply leave the country and return to their homeland.

Civil cases are seldom resolved when the culprit leaves the country. For example, Mexico cooperates in extraditing most criminal suspects. This doesn’t extend to civil cases.

Although Lara is promoting this for Dreamers, the bill is written to allow anyone who is here illegally to become certified or licensed in California.

Violation of professional licensure rules CAN be a criminal case, so extradition is not so clearcut as you make it out to be. Better question, why would anybody go through the considerable trouble and expense and training to get a professional license if their intent was to cut and run? This isn’t for your imagined immigrant scofflaw, but for somebody with professional training, skills, etc., they can’t use in this country, who otherwise would have to pick lettuce for a living and thereby deprive you of their professional services and low rates.

Your theory might apply to some of the professions listed, but the article makes it sound like it will apply to most or all state licensed professions. That would include things like security guards and hairdressers. While these professions do require a bit of extra training, it is not on the same level as someone with a college degree and might not be a major disincentive to “cutting and running” should they mess up big time.

I would worry most about security guards. If it is relatively easy to get a license, wouldn’t it be an excellent occupation for someone who is part of a criminal gang in Mexico but has no record here (yet)?

I suspect that there are some major employers who are encouraging this legislation because they want cheaper labor and that is the easiest way to get it. Why pay a native born citizen the decent wages they expect when you can squeeze someone desperate to stay in the country for minimum wage or less?

I agree with the person who posted earlier. If we are going to encourage immigration, let’s do it by moving people into a naturalization process that ends up with them becoming full citizens. The current limits on legal immigration from Mexico and Central America are unrealistically low. If we open the doors wider, we can take a better look at those that come in rather than try to find them after they’ve “snuck over the fence.”